Newbie question on internet or onboard cell connection

[RMLincoln]

We just booked NCL Joy for a B2B NY-Quebec-NY.  Haven’t been on NCL since maybe 2015 and the world has changed!  We don’t have a package. My husband has a medical monitoring device for eye pressures that he takes measurements with twice a day, then connects to phone for readouts. The phone connects to internet either by cell signal or WiFi. It only takes a few seconds each time.  We have unlimited cell data in US and for Roaming out of country we pay by the minute. 
 

I see we can pay for an unlimited WiFi package $30/day. Is there a “minutes” package onboard?  
 

Anybody know if NCL has Cellular at Sea or similar?  Maybe we could use a data connection through that?  How can we find out?  
 

Appreciate any information and suggestions on our options. Thank you. 

 

 

[BirdTravels]

NCL has Cellular at Sea on the Joy. The cost of the service is determined by your cell phone carrier. For example, we have AT&T and they charge $2.05/MB. You would have to be very careful to turn off all apps that use data other than your medical app otherwise you'll run up hundreds of dollars in charges if something like email app starts downloading. AT&T also has a $100 and $60 cruise ship plan that gives you more data at a flat rate. 

 

I think that NCL did away with all of the per-minute packages.

 

Question: How critical is it to have immediate, real time reporting? Can it wait until you are in port (AT&T, at least, includes Canada in most of their plans, and you don't have that many sea days)? I can't imagine that the doctor's office cares that much if you give them advance notice that you will be out of phone cover for a day here and a day there. 

 

Edited August 21, 2023 by BirdTravels

[RMLincoln]

Thank you!  I’ll check the Cellular at Sea cost with our carrier. 

We monitor eye pressures so that if there is a pressure spike we can apply additional meds as per doctors standing orders.
 

Being that we’ll be in port most days, using shore cell signal data connection might work just fine.
 

The device doesn’t show readings, the data go through an app for interpretation. New technology is great but it takes some understanding to work it in unusual environments. Or we can buy the internet package on board.
 

Next time maybe we’ll buy the perks package, it might be cheaper but I wasn’t given a price for that so I need to learn more. Thanks for your help!  m—
 

 

[Grimix]

If the monitor and phone just need to be on the same wifi network you could get a small travel router and connect them both to that. I can tell you that would probably be a much cheaper solution than going with wifi/cell plans. Of course if you are tech-challenged then it may not be the best course for you. A travel router is always in my electronics bag because I can share on-the-road wifi networks with my devices, and since it uses the same SSID and password as my home network my devices just 'work' (like apple TV's and alexa speakers.)

[RMLincoln]

1 hour ago, Grimix said:

If the monitor and phone just need to be on the same wifi network you could get a small travel router and connect them both to that. I can tell you that would probably be a much cheaper solution than going with wifi/cell plans. Of course if you are tech-challenged then it may not be the best course for you. A travel router is always in my electronics bag because I can share on-the-road wifi networks with my devices, and since it uses the same SSID and password as my home network my devices just 'work' (like apple TV's and alexa speakers.)

Great idea!  I hadn’t thought of that but it sounds like something to learn more about in general. For this need, I think the software to interpret the date from the measuring device is in the Cloud so we’ll need to connect to that external source. We can cable the device to a smartphone, or Bluetooth to the phone but the phone has to connect to the external world. Sounds like your method is a way to do that. m—